A detailed simulation of a small region of a brain built molecule by molecule has been constructed and has recreated experimental results from real brains. The "Blue Brain" has been put in a virtual body, and observing it gives the first indications of the molecular and neural basis of thought and memory. Scaling the simulation to the human brain is only a matter of money, says the project's head. The work was presented at the European Future Technologies meeting in Prague.

Actually the US used computers to automatically determine attach targets in the vietnam war. That went "well", as we all know by the pictures we have of this war.

Yeah, but it's still is a difference between thinking up some stupid algorithm which decides something, but is inherently deterministic and creating an AI which is non-deterministic and also not necessarily equipped with social behaviour, and let that thing decide what to do with it's power to kill.

If those machines were built not to kill, but to catch enemy targets (some sort of intelligent, walking prison cell), their power would not be as easy to misuse, even if they went on the rampage.